Article on symmetry-induced intermittency in a stochastic reflexive model.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Suspect counterfeit and bogus—part numbers that are not associated with any authentic parts—military-grade electronic parts can be found on Internet purchasing platforms, as none of the 16 parts vendors provided to GAO were legitimate. “Suspect counterfeit,” which applies to the first two categories of parts that were tested, is the strongest term used by an independent testing lab, signifying a potential violation of intellectual property rights, copyrights, or trademark laws, or misrepresentation to defraud or deceive. After submitting requests for quotes on both platforms, GAO received responses from 396 vendors, of which 334 were located in China; 25 in the United States; and 37 in other countries, including the United Kingdom and Japan. Of the 16 parts purchased, vendors usually responded within a day. GAO selected the first of any vendor among those offering the lowest prices that provided enough information to purchase a given part, generally within 2 weeks. Under GAO’s selection methodology, all 16 parts were provided by vendors in China."

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

This report discusses a series of research tasks regarding approaches to quantifying conservation savings.

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This Closure Report (CR) presents information supporting closure of the 92-Acre Area, which includes Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 111, 'Area 5 WMD Retired Mixed Waste Pits.' This CR provides documentation supporting the completed corrective actions and confirmation that the closure objectives were met. This CR complies with the requirements of the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) (FFACO, 1996 [as amended March 2010]). Closure activities began in January 2011 and were completed in January 2012. Closure activities were conducted according to Revision 1 of the Corrective Action Decision Document/Corrective Action Plan (CADD/CAP) for the 92-Acre Area and CAU 111 (U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office [NNSA/NSO], 2010). The following closure activities were performed: (1) Construct an engineered evapotranspiration cover over the boreholes, trenches, and pits in the 92-Acre Area; (2) Install use restriction (UR) warning signs, concrete monuments, and subsidence survey monuments; and (3) Establish vegetation on the covers. UR documentation is included as Appendix C of this report. The post-closure plan is presented in detail in Revision 1 of the CADD/CAP for the 92-Acre Area and CAU 111, and the requirements are summarized in Section 5.2 of this document. When the next request …

In nuclear material processing facilities, it is often necessary to balance the competing demands of accuracy and throughput. While passive neutron multiplicity counting is the preferred method for relatively fast assays of plutonium, the presence of low-Z impurities (fluorine, beryllium, etc.) rapidly erodes the assay precision of passive neutron counting techniques, frequently resulting in unacceptably large total measurement uncertainties. Conversely, while calorimeters are immune to these impurity effects, the long count times required for high accuracy can be a hindrance to efficiency. The higher uncertainties in passive neutron measurements of impure material are driven by the resulting large (>>2) {alpha}-values, defined as the ({alpha},n):spontaneous fission neutron emission ratio. To counter impurity impacts for high-{alpha} materials, a known-{alpha} approach may be adopted. In this method, {alpha} is determined for a single item using a combination of gamma-ray and calorimetric measurements. Because calorimetry is based on heat output, rather than a statistical distribution of emitted neutrons, an {alpha}-value determined in this way is far more accurate than one determined from passive neutron counts. This fixed {alpha} value can be used in conventional multiplicity analysis for any plutonium-bearing item having the same chemical composition and isotopic distribution as the original. With the results …

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This report provides the results of the annual post-closure inspections conducted at the closed Corrective Action Units (CAUs) located on the Tonopah Test Range (TTR), Nevada. This report covers calendar year 2011 and includes inspection and repair activities completed at the following CAUs: (1) CAU 400: Bomblet Pit and Five Points Landfill (TTR); (2) CAU 407: Roller Coaster RadSafe Area (TTR); (3) CAU 424: Area 3 Landfill Complexes (TTR); (4) CAU 453: Area 9 UXO Landfill (TTR); and (5) CAU 487: Thunderwell Site (TTR) Inspections were conducted according to the post-closure plans in the approved Closure Reports. The post-closure inspection plan for each CAU is included in Appendix B. The inspection checklists are included in Appendix C, field notes are included in Appendix D, and photographs taken during inspections are included in Appendix E. The annual post-closure inspections were conducted May 3 and 4, 2011. Maintenance was performed at CAU 424, CAU 453, and CAU 487. At CAU 424, two surface grade monuments at Landfill Cell A3-3 could not be located during the inspection. The two monuments were located and marked with lava rock on July 13, 2011. At CAU 453, there was evidence of animal burrowing. Animal burrows were …

Studies of the chemical properties of superheavy elements (SHE) pose interesting challenges due to their short half-lives and low production rates. Chemical systems must have extremely fast kinetics, fast enough kinetics to be able to examine the chemical properties of interest before the SHE decays to another nuclide. To achieve chemistry on such time scales, the chemical system must also be easily automated. Most importantly however, a chemical system must be developed which provides suitable separation and kinetics before an on-line study of a SHE can be performed. Relativistic effects make studying the chemical properties of SHEs interesting due to the impact these effects could have on the SHEs chemical properties. Relativistic effects arise when the velocity of the s orbital electrons approach the speed of light. As this velocity increases, the Bohr radius of the inner electron orbitals decreases and there is an increase in the particles mass. This contraction results in a destabilization of the energy of the outer d and f electron orbitals (5f and 6d in the case of SHE), which can cause these to expand due to their increased shielding from the nuclear charge. Another relativistic effect is the spin-orbit splitting for p, d, and …

Weekly newspaper from Emory, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Minutes for the February 21, 2012 TXSSAR meeting, held by the McKinney chapter.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and campus news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Sweetwater, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) is the Hanford tank operations contractor, charged with managing one of the most challenging environmental cleanup projects in the nation. The U.S. Department of Energy hired WRPS to manage 56 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks. The waste is the legacy of 45 years of plutonium production for the U. S. nuclear arsenal. WRPS mission is three-fold: safely manage the waste until it can be processed and immobilized; develop the tools and techniques to retrieve the waste from the tanks, and build the infrastructure needed to deliver the waste to the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) when it begins operating. WTP will 'vitrify' the waste by mixing it with silica and other materials and heating it in an electric melter. Vitrification turns the waste into a sturdy glass that will isolate the radioactivity from the environment. It will take more than 20 years to process all the tank waste. The tank waste is a complex highly radioactive mixture of liquid, sludge and solids. The radioactivity, chemical composition of the waste and the limited access to the underground storage tanks makes retrieval a challenge. Waste is being retrieved from aging single-shell tanks …

The H-Canyon facility will be used to dissolve Pu metal for subsequent purification and conversion to plutonium dioxide (PuO{sub 2}) using Phase II of HB-Line. To support the new mission, the development of a Pu metal dissolution flowsheet which utilizes concentrated (8-10 M) nitric acid (HNO{sub 3}) solutions containing potassium fluoride (KF) is required. Dissolution of Pu metal in concentrated HNO{sub 3} is desired to eliminate the need to adjust the solution acidity prior to purification by anion exchange. The preferred flowsheet would use 8-10 M HNO{sub 3}, 0.015-0.07 M KF, and 0.5-1.0 g/L Gd to dissolve the Pu up to 6.75 g/L. An alternate flowsheet would use 8-10 M HNO{sub 3}, 0.1-0.2 M KF, and 1-2 g/L B to dissolve the Pu. The targeted average Pu metal dissolution rate is 20 mg/min-cm{sup 2}, which is sufficient to dissolve a 'standard' 2250-g Pu metal button in 24 h. Plutonium metal dissolution rate measurements showed that if Gd is used as the nuclear poison, the optimum dissolution conditions occur in 10 M HNO{sub 3}, 0.04-0.05 M KF, and 0.5-1.0 g/L Gd at 112 to 116 C (boiling). These conditions will result in an estimated Pu metal dissolution rate of {approx}11-15 mg/min-cm{sup …

The Quick Urban & Industrial Complex (QUIC) Dispersion Modeling System has been developed to rapidly compute the transport and dispersion of toxic agent releases in the vicinity of buildings. It is composed of a wind solver, an 'urbanized' Lagrangian random-walk model, and a graphical user interface. QUIC has two different wind models: (a) The QUIC-URB wind solver, an empirically-based diagnostic wind model and (b) The QUIC-CFD (RANS) solver, based on the 3D Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. In this paper, we discuss the effect of different wind models on dispersion patterns in dense built-up areas. The model-computed wind from the two urban wind models- QUIC-URB and QUIC-CFD are used to drive the dispersion model. The concentration fields are then compared to measurements from the Oklahoma City Joint Urban 2003 field experiment. QUIC produces high-resolution 3-D mean wind and concentration fields around buildings, in addition to deposition on the ground and building surfaces. It has options for different release types, including point, moving point, line, area, and volumetric sources, as well as dense gas, explosive buoyant rise, multi-particle size, bioslurry, and two-phase releases. Other features include indoor infiltration, a pressure solver, outer grid simulations, vegetative canopies, and population exposure calculations. It has …

Monosodium titanate (MST) for use in the Actinide Removal Process (ARP) must be qualified and verified in advance. A single qualification sample for each batch of material is sent to SRNL for analysis, as well as a statistical sampling of verification samples. The Harrell Industries Lot No.120111 qualification and the first 12 verification samples met all the requirements in the specification indicating the material is acceptable for use in the process. Analyses of Pail 125 verification sample fails the criteria for solids content and has measurably lower pH, density, and total bottle weight. The verification sample for Pail 125 was retested for weight percent solids after checking that all of the solids had been suspended. The sample again failed to meet acceptance criteria. SRNL recommends accepting Pails 1 through 120. Pails 121 through 125 should be rejected and returned to the vendor.

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This report examines the extent of the security problems in Central America, the efforts undertaken by Central government to address them, and U.S. support for Central American efforts through the Central America Regional Security Initiative.

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This report discusses the current debate over "net neutrality." While there is no single accepted definition of "net neutrality," most agree that any such definition should include the general principles that owners of the networks that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network, and they should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network.

This report describes the President's FY2012 request for funding for Department of Homeland Security programs and activities, as submitted to congress on February 6, 2011.